Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

Bike Raffle: 1954

Carefree postwar boys, complete with a Beaver Cleaver look-alike, participating in a bicycle registration day in Lafayette, Indiana. The event began in the iconic city park, where the kids' bicycles were inspected and registered, and this raffle was held for a free bicycle. Later, they rode through town in a bicycle parade led by two local police officers on three-wheel motorcycles. View full size.

This and a few others I have that are from the same event were discarded by the local newspaper when they cleaned out their archives. I founded and manage a Facebook page called Lafayette/West Lafayette Nostalgia that has 11,000+ members and thousands of photos; a friend of mine found these large-format negatives and sent them to me; photographer is unknown. Your site is one of the great joys of my life, Dave. Thank you so much for all you do and for publishing my photo!

Our small town required the bicycles to have small metal license plates on them. We kids would line up early that Saturday morning when the new plates were issued in order to get a single digit number. (Plate # 1 was on display in city hall, with the reminder to register your bike.) I think the plate cost 25 cents, which was a substantial amount for a child. The plate typically hung from the back of the seat with 2 metal S hooks (provided with the plate), and rattled when you rode.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.